This exhibition is a kind of memorial to Nuit Magique, a popular Montreal nightclub that ran from 1976 to 1983. Since few tangible archives of this cult venue still exist, our understanding of it relies on anecdotes from its former owners, and more importantly, on writings from the fringe literary scene. The exhibition project began with the discovery of a book of poems by Spiros Zafiris titled Midnight Magic (1981), where he describes the nightclub as a refuge for poets and signers, among them the legendary Leonard Cohen. Through links made between this book and the poems of Cohen and Henry Moscovitch, it becomes clear that the Nuit Magique scene had an indelible influence on the collective unconscious of the late 1970s. The club’s owner, Bob Di Salvio, was inspired to open a nightclub in the Old Port as a kind of ‘theatre of the real’, and is said to have named it after a lyric in Van Morrison’s song Moondance. In the winter of 1981-82, Cohen co-wrote a libretto with music composed by Lewis Furey. The project had many names: Merry-Go Man, The Hall, and Angel Eyes, before it was finally adapted for the screen in 1985 under the title Night Magic, with Carole Laure in the title role of Judy. The documents that inspired the works on view here offer a somewhat nostalgic view on this period (the post-Olympics Montreal, the disco years, the James Bay project).

Referentiality is at the root of Guillaume Adjutor Provost’s creative process, out of which emerges a kind of conceptual materialism; a conceptual approach that concludes in a very tangible form. This formation of conceptual processes is suggested by the title, ‘Materially nothing, potentially everything,’ a quote by Bob Di Salvio that could be interpreted as a call to abandon our materialist impulses. The exhibition can be seen as one within a series of possible iterations. Suspended concrete globes hang like moons in the gallery. In the centre, a collection of altered smoking pipes rests on a table. The shape of these objects mimics the conjunctio spirituum, a symbolic representation of the union of the masculine and feminine principles in the form of two nude, intertwined angels, which Leonard Cohen borrowed from C. G. Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy (1953), for the cover of his book, Death of a Lady’s Man. When the same artwork was used for the British release of his album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, the image was censored by adding a fifth angel’s wing to mask the offending parts. The works on paper here are inspired by various lyrical texts by Spiros, Moscovitch, and Cohen, all of which refer to Nuit Magique. The writing is nebulous and serves as a kind of smoke screen where the act of writing prevails over readability. As a whole, the work brings us back to the term ‘scenius”, as coined by Brian Eno, meaning the culture of a time is defined by the ecology of its creators. To question history also means to blur the distinction between the centre and the periphery, between celebrated and forgotten literature.

Translated from the French by Jo-Anne Balcaen
Photo Credits : Guy L'Heureux